Telzey Amberdon by James H. Schmitz

All right, I’m already scared, Telzey told the psi awareness mentally. You don’t have to work at it.

She sensed no response, no reaction whatever.

Couldn’t it hear her?

She moistened her lips, puzzled, looked up at Dal Axwen’s worried, sad face.

“Let’s walk around in the open a bit while I dry off,” she suggested. “How did all this get started?”

* * *

Axwen couldn’t say precisely when his troubles had begun. There’d been scattered occurrences in the past few years which in retrospect indicated it was developing during that period. He was an attorney; and sometimes at his office, sometimes at home, he’d discover small articles had been displaced, were lying where he hadn’t left them. It seemed inexplicable, particularly when they happened to be objects he’d been handling perhaps only moments before. Once he found a stack of papers strewn about the carpet as if by a sudden gust of wind, in a room into which no wind could have penetrated.

“It was mystifying, of course,” he said. “But those events were quite infrequent, and I didn’t really think too much about them. They didn’t seem important enough. Then one night a door started slamming in my home. That was half a year ago.”

That was the first of a series of events. There were periods in which nothing happened, but he never knew when a previously solid chair might collapse, or other even more disconcerting things would occur. He began to wake up at night to hear somebody walking heavily about the room. When he turned on the light, the footsteps stopped and no one was there. He took to sleeping with every part of the house well illuminated, but assorted manifestations continued. His office staff presently came in for its share of mystifying and alarming experiences and deserted him. Replacements didn’t last long. It didn’t really seem to matter. By then his business was almost nonexistent.

“Last night at my home there was a continuing series of disturbances—enough to make it impossible for me to get to sleep. It was as if he’d decided to drive me out of my mind. Finally I drugged myself heavily and fell asleep almost at once. I slept for a full twelve hours and woke up more refreshed than I’d been in weeks. There were no indications that my persecutor was around. That’s when it occurred to me that if I went far away and hid for a while, I might be able to rid myself of him permanently. I acted on the thought at once, picked out this resort at random from a listing, flew up here, bought a boat in the village, loaded it up with camping equipment and supplies, and set out across the lake. This bay seemed ideal for my purpose. Then, when I was beginning to feel almost certain that I was free of him at last, he let me know he’d found me again.”

“How did he do that?” Telzey asked.

“I had set up my shelter and was reaching for one of the food containers. It exploded just as I touched it. I wasn’t hurt in the least. But I knew what it meant. I could almost hear him laughing at me.”

Axwen added, looking dolefully at Telzey, “I don’t remember very well what happened most of the rest of the day. I was in a state of total despair and fear. I remember lying here on the sand, thinking I might never get up again. Finally I heard you call me.”

* * *

Some time passed—

Axwen stirred suddenly, lifted his head, and observed in a startled voice, “It seems to be getting dark very quickly.”

Telzey glanced over at him. They were sitting on the sand now, a few feet apart, looking toward the lake beyond the bay. She felt tired and tense. Her face was filmed with sweat. She’d been working around inside Axwen’s mind for some while, investigating, probing. Naturally she hadn’t let him become aware of what she did.

It had been instructive. She knew by now what manner of entity haunted Axwen, and why he was being haunted. The haunter wasn’t far away, and eager, terribly eager, to destroy her, the psi who seemed to stand between itself and its prey. It had appalling power; she couldn’t match it on that direct level. So far, she’d been holding it off with a variety of stratagems. But it was beginning to understand what she did and to discover how to undo the stratagems. It couldn’t be too long before she’d find she’d run out of workable defenses.

She didn’t know just when the moment would come. So she’d decided to bring Dal Axwen awake again. She had to try to get his help while it was still possible.

Axwen then had come awake and made his puzzled comment on the apparent shortness of the day.

Telzey said, “I guess it’s just turning evening at the normal time for this latitude and season.”

Axwen looked at his watch. “You’re right,” he admitted. “Strange—the last two hours seem to have passed like a dream. I recall almost nothing of what we said and did.” He shook his head. “So I seem to be losing my memory, too. Well, at least there’ve been no further manifestations.” He glanced at Telzey in sudden question. “Or have there been?”

“No,” Telzey said.

Axwen yawned comfortably, gazing over at her.

“It’s curious,” he remarked. “I feel very calm now, quite undisturbed. I’m aware of my predicament and really see no way out. And I’m concerned that you may come to harm before you’re away from here. At the same time, I seem almost completely detached from those problems.”

Telzey nodded. “You try to never get angry at anyone, don’t you?”

Axwen shook his head. “No, I don’t approve of anger. When I feel such an impulse, which isn’t often, I’m almost always able to overcome it. If I can’t overcome it, then at least I won’t express it or act on it.”

Telzey nodded again. “You’re someone who has about the average amount of human meanness in him. He knows it’s not good, and he’s trained himself, much more carefully than the average man, not to let it show in what he says or does. In fact, he’s trained himself to the point where he usually doesn’t even feel it.”

Axwen said uncertainly, “This discussion is beginning to be rather confusing.”

“A couple of things happened when you were ten years old,” Telzey said. She went on talking a minute or two. Axwen’s face grew strained as he listened. She said then, “I might have hypnotized you a while ago, or given you a spray of dope and asked you questions and told you to forget them again. But you’d better believe I know what I just told you because I read your mind. It isn’t all I’ve done either. You’ve felt calm and detached till now because that’s how I arranged it. I’ve been keeping you calm and detached. I don’t want you to get any more upset than we can help.” She added, “I’m afraid you’re going to be pretty upset anyway.”

Axwen stared at her. “About what?”

“The fact that you have a kind of second personality,” Telzey said.

His eyelids flickered for a moment, and his jaw muscles went tight. He said nothing.

* * *

“Let me tell you about him,” Telzey went on. “He’s the things you haven’t wanted to be consciously. That’s about it. The way most people would look at it, it didn’t make him very evil. But he’s known what he is for quite a time, and he knows about you. You’re the controlling personality. He’s been locked away, unable to do anything except watch what you do. And he wasn’t even always able to do that. He hasn’t liked it, and he doesn’t like you. You’re his jailer. He’s wanted to be the controlling personality and have it the other way around.”

Axwen sighed. “Please don’t talk like that,” he said.

He considered, added, “However, if I did have such a secondary personality as a result of having purged myself of characteristics of which I couldn’t approve, I agree that I’d keep it locked away. The baser side of our nature, whatever form it takes, shouldn’t be permitted to emerge while we can prevent it.”

“Well, things have been changing there,” Telzey said. “You see, Mr. Axwen, you’re a psi, too.”

He was silent a moment, eyes fixed on her. Then he shook his head slowly.

“You don’t believe you’re a psi?” Telzey said.

“I’m afraid I don’t.” Axwen half smiled. “I’ll admit that for a moment you almost had me believing you were one.”

Telzey nodded. “That’s how the real trouble started,” she said. “You didn’t want to believe it. You should have realized a few years ago that you were beginning to develop psi abilities and could control them. But it frightened you. So that was something else you pushed out of awareness.” She added, “These last few months I’ve noticed other people doing the same thing. Usually it doesn’t matter—there isn’t enough ability there anyway to make much difference.”

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